Last month, Sony formally announced the next generation of its Playstation gaming device. The new Playstation 4, which will replace the aging console that has been Sony's flagship since 2006, features beefier graphics capability, more memory, and greater online and mobile connectivity.

Gaming chipmaker Nvidia was apparently not impressed.

In an interview with TechRadar, Nvidia Content and Technology SVP Tony Tamasi groused that the next-generation console used hardware that was already outdated, and compared its capabilities to a low-end gaming PC.

"If history predicts the future, then these next-generation consoles, while being more powerful than the current ones, will very quickly end up more than an order of magnitude behind the PC," Tamasi said.

Before we get into why Tamasi is right and why that doesn't matter, it bares mentioning that Nvidia is not making the chips that power the PS4, despite being one of the main suppliers on the older PS3. That honor goes to rival chipmaker AMD, which reportedly won the contract away from Nvidia by agreeing to provide components at a lower price. So Tamasi's comments, in a certain sense, smell of sour grapes.

That being said, it doesn't make him wrong. It's absolutely true that the chips going into the PS4 aren't exactly on the bleeding edge when it comes to power and features. If you're willing to pay a premium, you can build a gaming PC rig with off-the-shelf components with benchmarks that, on paper, put what Sony has announced to shame.

But here's the thing: That's always been true of gaming consoles. In fact, it's largely the point.

Keep in mind that the device Sony is replacing has been in use continuously for seven years. Seven years, during which its hardware remained fundamentally unchanged, save for the introduction of peripherals like the Playstation Move. That's an eternity in the technology world. Consider this: We've had three full versions of Windows since the Playstation was released. Mobile gaming wasn't a thing because there was no iPad. Heck, there wasn't even an iPhone yet.

Yet nobody complained about the outdated hardware on the PS3, even as it started looking more and more long in the tooth compared to what was available on a gaming PC. That's because consoles and gaming PCs are fundamentally different products addressing fundamentally different markets.

Put simply, most people don't make the choice between a console costing several hundred dollars that can be set up by plugging it into a TV and a gaming PC that costs several thousand dollars and must be assembled from scratch. And they're different for developers too — part of the beauty of a console is precisely that its hardware stays the same for many years. You know exactly what you're developing for with a console, compared to the fragmented market with many different hardware specs and moving targets presented on PC.

Ultimately, Tamasi's coments amount to a lot of smoke without much fire. Nvidia is still a player in PC gaming, so they're talking up PC gaming. Don't read too much into it.